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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Substitutionary Atonement.. why was Christ crucified?
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fatprophet
Shipmate
# 3636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by daisymay:
fatprophet,
it's not just someone or other "paying" for us, it's God taking the responsibility and paying for us.
And having God as the one we owe everything to is the reason that SA people say we dedicate ourselves wholly to God.
I'm not sure I understand the difference between someone else paying and God paying. Whatever, we are still avoiding paying ourselves and I thought God had to uphold justice? Can God really let people off for nothing, without any effort on their part. I know its basic Christianity but does it make sense really?
Perhaps you mean that since God is the one who we "owe" the debt too, then God's paying himself does not offend justice as there is no "higher" justice than God himself anyway. This might well make more sense.
You have made me pause for thought Daisymay. Thanks.
And stop for some sleep. nitey nite!
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FAT PROPHET
Posts: 530 | From: Wales, UK | Registered: Dec 2002
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Grits
Compassionate fundamentalist
# 4169
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Posted
As usual, I am seeing plenty of names, book titles, terminology and philosophy batted about. And while I admire the obvious study and knowledge presented by this, I can never understand why no one wants to go to the Book.
Christ's last words on the cross were, "It is finished." In the original text this is a one word phrase which means, "Paid in full." It is the word that was stamped on papers of credit when the last payment of the debt was made.
From the cross, Christ cried out -- to the Father, to the world, and to us -- "It is paid in full."
How can that be so hard to understand?
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Lord, fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff, and shut it when I've said enough. Amen.
Posts: 8419 | From: Nashville, TN | Registered: Feb 2003
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
If that's true, Grits, then why is the line never translated that way? And what's your source for that assertion?
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Grits
Compassionate fundamentalist
# 4169
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Posted
It is the Greek word tetelestai. When a debt was fully paid, this word would be written on a loan document, will, or letter. It was also used on tax receipts. In the first century, when people had paid their debt in full, they would shout out the word tetelestai. It was a shout of triumph or victory, if you will. I don't know why both the King James and the New International Versions of the Bible translate tetelestai as, "It is finished."
So, in essence, it was a cry of victory as much as a pronouncement of atonement, wouldn't you think? It seems the melding of the two lines of thought on this is a pretty reasonable interpretation.
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Lord, fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff, and shut it when I've said enough. Amen.
Posts: 8419 | From: Nashville, TN | Registered: Feb 2003
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Freehand
The sound of one hand clapping
# 144
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Posted
Psyduck, despite your exceeding eloquence, I still cannot fathom how substitutionary atonement addresses the problem of guilt. As I see it, substitutionary atonement places the problem within God. We are not acceptable to God because we have violated justice and God must balance the scale. Jesus satisfies God's justice and makes God able to accept us. To me, substitutionary atonement explains more about God coming to terms with sin than it does about our condition.
I don't think that God has any problems loving us under any conditions. I find any lesser view of God to be irreconcilable with a God of love, even from a purely logical perspective. The problem is not about God's enmity against sin but about our internal self-alienation that prevents us from accepting God's love. It is not that God cannot tolerate sin but that we have been captured in a net of self-hatred. God's love is omnipresent whether we perceive it or not.
As such, I don't see the cross as God balancing the scale. Like you said, it's more like the judge taking off his wig and stepping out of the rigid justice structure. Love cannot be legislated by a law of justice. After all, love does not flow out of obedience to a system of punitive justice. Rather, true justice flows out of a heart of love. How this looks in real life is obviously much messier and this is a great problem for our conceptualizations.
I don't see the cross as necessary. I think that God can love and forgive us with or without such a dramatic expression of love. Perhaps part of the problem is the attempt to look for some sort of philosophical necessity to drive God to go through such pain. I suppose that this pushes me towards the view of Abelard but, really, I go much further. I don't believe that there is a life after this life. I don't believe in making a distinction between the spiritual realm and the physical realm. I don't even believe in making a distinction between God and the "creation". I see God as the very substance of the universe and myself as one interactive piece of it all. (Maybe I am talking out my ass. What is the difference between thinking this way and not believing in God at all? I don't know.) I guess that my fundamental assumption is that at-one-ment is the very nature of things and that it is our confusion that fragments the world into conflict. (How very optimistic of me. ![[Biased]](wink.gif) )
I have had my share of troubles, like anyone else, and there have been times when I have reached points of high crisis. At these points, I released my problems to God and I found some sort of transcendent acceptance and peace. It had nothing to do with repentance (though, by God, I have done a hell of a lot of it). It was more to do with releasing control and finding, to my great surprise, that the world is not exclusively shit. If anything, this experience is closer to Taoism than anything that I have found within Christianity.
So, what do I see in the cross? I see the dynamic of Jesus relinquishing control over evil around him, even submitting to it, trusting his welfare to the Father. I see love and weakness transcending evil and strength. Ultimately, I don't even believe that it is a true story. I don't believe the afterlife or that Jesus rose again. I don't believe that Jesus was God. However, I do see the story as a true dynamic of humanity and of my own life. At my skeptical times, I see it as a feeble hope but ultimately I have been staking my life on it. ![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif)
Freehand ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posts: 673 | Registered: May 2001
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
Grits - going to the Book is precisely what knocks out the idea that SA is the only way of looking at things. There are plenty of Biblical passages that suggest the whole thing is partly about a battle to the death with the power of Death. (I don't like proof texting, but I could.)
SA may well be one (among several) ways of looking at things. But as several people on this thread have pointed out, it has its problems:
(1) The whole idea of paying a debt: by whom, to whom, and for what? In particular, how can God be said to 'owe' anyone anything?
(2) Some formulations of SA require God to be subjected to an idea (our idea?) of Justice (the debt is paid so the 'God's Justice', rather than God Himself, can be 'satisfied') - but surely God can't be subjected to anything?
(3) Far from dealing with feelings of guilt, SA can actually increase them - whenever I look at Jesus on the cross, SA tells me it's me who 'should' be there.
It's point (3) that says to me that SA is the wrong viewpoint for our time. The huge increase in the market for psychoanalysis and various kinds of counselling shows clearly that we modern westerners are pathologically guilt-ridden people. Why are people going to listen to a version of a 'gospel' that actually adds to their feelings of guilt? To put it bluntly, when your mother, your partner and your boss are heaping guilt on you, who wants a God who'll only join in with them?
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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daisymay
St Elmo's Fire
# 1480
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Posted
I think, Adeodatus, that some of the getting rid of guilt business is what freehand was saying - the "letting go" experience.
If a church keeps going on about how full of guilt and shame we are, they are preventing us doing that. The CofS ethos I grew up in somehow emphasised that (and it was the local culture too) to the extent that it was regarded as arrogance for anyone to say, "I am a Christian" rather than "I hope I am a Christian." Nowadays, I never say the prayer that says how unworthy we are to even gather up the crumbs under the table. I haven't yet managed to let go of the anger I feel about it being included in services.
Any place that is teaching about SA should also be teaching about the idea that the guilt has gone. Visualisations like dumping our bags of rubbish at the foot of the cross and not picking them up again. Identification of dying with Christ and rising with Christ. Being clothed in robes of righteousness. If they are only banging on about justification and not sanctification, they are not looking at or teaching anything like the whole picture.
Grit's picture of the stamp is a useful one not only for the "finish" but for the "new start".
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London
Flickr fotos
Posts: 11224 | From: London - originally Dundee, Blairgowrie etc... | Registered: Oct 2001
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daisymay
St Elmo's Fire
# 1480
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Posted
Missed something and edit was too slow.
There's that story of the guilt-racked person asking God to forgive them for something they had already asked forgiveness for the previous day. God looks round and says, "I can't see anything. It's already disappeared." It's what you're saying - we are so full of toxic guilt and shame that the church needs to find ways to help us leave them behind and go forward into ![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif) life.
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London
Flickr fotos
Posts: 11224 | From: London - originally Dundee, Blairgowrie etc... | Registered: Oct 2001
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Phizz
Shipmate
# 4770
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Posted
Radio 4 had an interesting program on this here . If you've got half an hour it's worth a listen. There's another program on the Orthodox/Catholic schism as well.
Anyway one of the contributors made an interesting remark which has started me thinking on a new version of the story. Can someone classify/repudiate this please.
Jesus is the ultimate scapegoat. OK I know this is pretty orthodox but I mean scapegoat in the ordinary English sense of the word. Jesus dies to point out how stupid our sense of justice is. To point out how limited our understanding of access to God is.
The Human condition is a cycle of scapegoating of one group by another followed by recrimination at the injustice of the scapegoating. Think about
the second world war and the middle east. Cycles of violence perpetuated by our sense of injustice.
What's the first big consequence of "original sin". Abel gets the blame for Cain feeling seperate from God. I used to feel sorry for Cain. I mean how was he supposed to know that God only liked meat? It's seems so arbritrary. Cain's sin is to be ready to kill to restore his understanding of Good and Evil rather than accept he can learn about God from his brother.
So God dies break the consequeces of our faulty judgements.
Appeals to me but then I got a P/j rating of 100%/0% on that psychological profile thingy
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ST. PAUL WOULD HAVE POSTED USING CAPS LOCK (Galatians 6:11)
Was Dr Phizz. Now just Phizz
Posts: 116 | Registered: Jul 2003
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testbear
Shipmate
# 4602
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Posted
Can I try something, purely to see if it works? Oh, go on, humour me...
If we start from God being holy ( - not just appearing to be holy, but actually setting out what holieness is just by his existence, defining it, being both the source and the reality of everything that can ever be described in any way as "good" or "goodness" - ) then where does that leave any ideas of sinfulness? Surely, if you say God = good and only God = good, then anything that is seperated from God, anything which is different from God in any way is bad? Or, perhaps more to the point, is not good, because it is not God? Is that unreasonable?
It's always been my understanding that from the moment at which Eve decided to bring a course of action which involved "not-God" into the way things were going to happen, then there was an element of "not-God" (and hence "not-good") in the consequences of that choice...? (As for the debates about what the choice actually was, and if there had to be an element of "not-God" for there to be a choice in the first place, etc, well, those are other topics for other days.)
So.
Can God (who is, let's remember, holy - who is the one thing, nevermind person, which can ever be said to bear even the slightest resemblence to "good" (I understate this purely as a literary technique, you understand)) and "not-God" co-exist? No, runs the arguement, because if God ever came into contact with "not-God", either God would have a part of "not-God" in him, and hence not be God ( remember = 100% totally the definition of holiness and goodness, nothing more, nothing less), or the "not-God" would have a part of God in it. (But God is a total thing, not just little bits of holiness - it's all or nothing at all, so to speak). By definition (hopefully, for this arguement's sake) God and "not-God" are like black and white, on and off, top and bottom - no shades of grey, no sliding scale, no halfway point. Holiness has to be holiness-and-only-holiness, anything less is not-holy, not-good, not-God.
Yea? Nay?
So, from the initial point at which everything was God/good/holy we've now (in our arguement) come to the point at which there is this inconsistency, this not-good/not-holy in a universe which began as totally good/holy, right? The Fall has happened, there is now an element of not-God in the universe. And, since both "God" and "not-God" are 100% opposite ideas/states, then there's no such thing as a universe which is "a little bit not-God" - if it's even a teeeny tiny litttle bit seperated from God, then it's simply not God, is it? It might look pretty darn close to being God, it may well have you fooled, but it's just not God.
Which poses a problem. There's God, but with an entire world that he made which is now his opposite, his antithesis, something in which, by definition, he can never fully be himself in. He's God, it's not-God. He's good, it's no-good. He's holy, it's not-holy. And, likewise, every little bit of that world will be seperated from God, by definition totally unable to be God/good/holy, for the same reasons.
So where does that leave us? And where does that leave God? And, more to the point, where does that leave substitutionary atonement and its conterparts?
If God is going to come into contact with anything which is not-God, first of all the not-God needs to have its not-Godness taken away from it - if you take away what's not-God, all you're left with is God, right?
How do you get a stain out of a jumper? You soak it in water (and relevant chemicals, but let's not overwork ourselves here), let the water take all the bits of the stain into itself (becoming dirty water in the process), and then (most importantly) you make sure that the dirty water and the clean jumper become permanently seperated, and stay permanently seperated. By transferring the dirt into something else, the jumper is clean and the water is dirty, and it's the water which is now disposed of, instead of the jumper.
Does this have any bearing on God's situation? (Ha, my linguistic approach to this is rapidly becoming more amusing as I go on. ) Well...
What if (a dangerous phrase, I know) God could find a way of getting rid of everything that was not-God in the world? That would mean that the Godness would be all that's left, right? "Hmmm" I hear you murmur, "this indicates that the not-God part of the world is somehow linked with the God part of it, so that you can have them both making up the world and yet be able to seperate the two - and you've just said that the two can't exist together, haven't you?" Well, it's not that they're existing together - there's still a seperation between them. They're not the same thing, they're two very seperate and opposed parts of what makes up the whole thing. We, as the good book itself says, were made "in the image of God", but yet "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". God is still "in" the world, but we can't say he is the world - the world is not God/good/holy, the world is "not-God"/"not-good"/"not-holy".
So, if God could take all that is not-God/not-good/not-holy, and place it somewhere where it is seperate from him, this would mean that what is left would be God/good/holy, and so would not be seperate from him, right? This place where the not-God goes, let's call it Hell for arguements sake, has to exist if not-God has been brought into the equation, yes? Some would say this is the state of the world at the moment, but I say (as above) that the world is not-God sitting next to, but seperate from, God. Hell would have to be a place entirely without God at all - purely, wholly, 100% not-God. Oui? Non?
So how can God set this up? Well, I suppose this rests on another characteristic, another synonym for "God" which we can bring into the equation - "life". In the beginning, God was what created and sustained life as we understand it, and if we can say that before the Fall, the whole world was God/good/holy, let us add to this that we can say that this was what we mean by "life" - a state of existence which is the way God started it all off. Anything which is not-God/not-good/not-holy becomes not-life also, or what we would call Death. (Or just death, no capital? A small quibble, I think, but not something I'm 100% sure about the difference.)
So the world is sitting in this dual state - God next to but seperate from not-God, life sitting side by side with death. We can see both elements in our existence - we have life, but just as surely as we have life, there will be not-life.
If God can take something which is God (/good/holy/life) and seperate it from himself, then it becomes not-God (/not-good/not-holy/not-life). More to the point, if God can take something which is life, and place it in a state of death, then that state of death is defined as what is seperate from God. By taking all the not-God, and placing it in this state, this position, this place, then what remains will be God, yes? Now, all that this would take is for something which isn't just not-God sitting next to (but seperate from) God, but instead something which is simultaneously God and not-God, which has every single part of it holy/good/life, but at the same time is entirely not-good/not-holy/not-life. If you have this thing, and proceed to seperate it from God, then it's not-Godness would be seperate from God (as previously defined), but its Godness couldn't be seperated from God, since they're the same thing. Does that make sense?
To be honest, I've run out of time or energy to continue this tonight. I've saved this, and will most likely come back to it, but any comments on this would be much appreciated. I feel I've worked my way into a logical grammmatical corner, but I can't see it, and can't look for it. Thank you.
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"If you really believe what you say you believe / you wouldn't be so damn reckless with the words you speak"
Posts: 127 | From: a town where you can't smell a thing | Registered: Jun 2003
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
I like your train of thought, testbear, but I've spotted something that doesn't ring true for me.
I think you're thinking about the wrong God! You seem in most of your argument to be treting God as a thing or a concept (all that stuff about God and not-God not being able to be involved with each other). I think the argument would follow a different course if you took the classical Christian concept of God as person - or more accurately as Persons. Clearly a person can be closely involved and in contact with something that is not that person.
The supreme example of this, of course, is Christ, who in a manner of speaking is God and not-God at the same time, in one person!
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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fatprophet
Shipmate
# 3636
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Posted
I am not sure what you are getting at testbear, but it may be profound.
The two realms metaphor is useful in that it can express and explain the atonement as the result of God longing to unite with us, but that unification of God and Man inevitably costing God because God must, in a sense, descend into our realm to bring us to heaven on what was is in a sense a suicidal rescue mission.
I liken the incarnation and crucifixition to other analogies of rescue. Think of any situation where one must enter a dangerous place to rescue someone who is stranded and in mortal danger: a soldier caught in no-mans land, where someone must brave the cross fire to get to him; or a drowning man only rescued by the rescuer entering the dark, deep and cold waters himself; a person giving a blood transfusion to a dying man or a person running into a burning house, possibly sacrificing his life to save his family. Is Christ's death not like that to?
This is what I understand by the phrase that Christ "bears our sins/punishment". This is not the case of punishment of Jesus for our sins, but Jesus experiencing the conseqences of our sins (our punishment) simply and inevitably as a result of being in our world and uniting with our dark souls.
Lets put in testbear speak perhaps:
Atonement = God + NotGod, a positive minus its negation but God is infinite positive and so there is infinite remainder: God 'suffers' the subtraction, an emptying of himself into nothingness (incarnation, death on the cross), yet remains,(victory, resurrection)
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FAT PROPHET
Posts: 530 | From: Wales, UK | Registered: Dec 2002
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Liber Usualis
Shipmate
# 5193
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Posted
This is all very well but it seems to me that one point that has not been looked at is the
quote:
It was taught more in the sense of God sacrificing himself
Surely this is the hieracy of Patripassianism or Sabellianism? God did not die on the cross his Son did. God sent his Son to die and so sacrifice was an important factor but God did not sacrifice himself.
My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me? surely highlights this fact with the obvious question: If God suffered Christs pain, why did he send his Son? It vital to make this difference know
Liber.
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Sing all tongues, let none be dumb; "Sacred Heart thy Kingdom come"
Posts: 59 | From: Bristol | Registered: Nov 2003
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Nightlamp
Shipmate
# 266
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Liber Usualis:
Surely this is the hieracy of Patripassianism or Sabellianism? God did not die on the cross his Son did. God sent his Son to die and so sacrifice was an important factor but God did not sacrifice himself.
Are you denying the divinity of christ? that is arianism.
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I don't know what you are talking about so it couldn't have been that important- Nightlamp
Posts: 8442 | From: Midlands | Registered: May 2001
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Alt Wally
Cardinal Ximinez
# 3245
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Posted
quote:
by Dr. Phizz: The Human condition is a cycle of scapegoating of one group by another followed by recrimination at the injustice of the scapegoating.
Doc, I haven't listened to the program yet, but the things you mention sound very much like Rene Girard to me. He talks a lot about scapegoating and mimetic violence. I believe he descibes the idea of Sa in terms of mimetic violence, and he rejects this view of sacrifice done in order to appease God. I think what he says is that Christ was in fact the ultimate scapegoat and gave himself for the life of the world, and in doing so he debunked all of the previous myths of sacrifice and patterns imitative rivalry that form our world.
Posts: 3684 | Registered: Aug 2002
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear Nightlamp
With apologies to Liber Usualis for not addressing you directly first.
Strictly speaking I think that it's neo-Nestorianism ... what happened to the human nature (death) was completely separate from the divine nature .... almost to the point of there being two persons ... the human Jesus who died and the divine Christ who did not. However, I agree that the use of the word "Son" could indicate a "not-fully-God" version of Jesus which would be Arian. I have encountered this many many times. "Do you believe Jesus is God?" ... "No, but he is the Son of God." Which person acted here ... "Jesus or God?" etc. etc.
Dear Liber Usualis
You are of course spot on that God did not die or experience death on the Cross. I think that the source of Islam's take on Jesus, (being, essentially a gross Christian heresy), is that God cannot die .... therefore Jesus did not die on the cross but was carted off to the Kashmir .... OR that Jesus DID die .... and, therefore, cannot be God. (You see can hear faint echoes of this primitive and unresolved tension between Nestorianism and Monophysitism in Islam in the belief that Jesus was born of a Virgin and yet was nothing more than a prophet).
Islam resolved itself toward the hyper-Nestorian solution and lost contact with the Godhead except as to the inspirational / prophetic dimension, (which is hardly surprising since it was Nestorian Christianity with which Mohammed had the most contact).
The Orthodox resolution of this seeming paradox is that when Jesus died the human nature experienced death in the separation of the only and fully human soul and the only and fully human body ... the body being incorrupt and lying in the tomb (on account of union of the divine and human natures; that is an incorruptible body and a perfect humanity) ... the soul, fully energised by the divine nature and still in one personhood descending to Hades and imparting resurrection life to the righteous who had lived before the Incarnation, (which of course is the Orthodox icon of the resurrection).
At the resurrection of Christ the soul of Christ (human) was embodied afresh in a new creation body, taking the physical seed of its resurrection from the old incorrupt body but totally transformed. (I am limiting myself to Pauline language from 1 Corinthians 15).
Finally let me return to the death of Christ itself. When the human body and soul separated at death, ("Father into thy hands I commit my spirit") what was happening to the divine nature. Of course it was not compromised in any way and did not suffer in the sense that the humanity of Christ suffered. However, that is NOT to say that the divine nature had no communication of or experience of the pain suffered by the human nature ... physical, emotional, psychic, spiritual. More especially it is vital to keep in mind that there was a rent in the heart of God as Christ died. Just in as much as Christ experienced abandonment ... so also the Father experienced INEFFABLY the WILLING sacrifice of His Son ... for such is Love. The divine nature shared equally by the hypostases is cruciform in its aspect of Infinite Sacrificial Love ... an aspect which is eternal anyway in the trinitarian relations.
We must, therefore, avoid both the heresy of Patripassianism (the Father suffered) and all those heresies reflected in the decisions of the 2nd and 4th Ecumenical Councils that would too radically separate the human or the divine in Christ or occlude one in favour of the other.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Liber Usualis
Shipmate
# 5193
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Posted
Fr Gregory,
Thank you for your message. I seem to to be agreeing with you on almost everything that you have said here and I think that it was purely my wording that threw people off what I was saying. Indeed, I was not denying the divinity of Christ but merely stating that, and I think we agree, the Father did not suffer with the Son.
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Sing all tongues, let none be dumb; "Sacred Heart thy Kingdom come"
Posts: 59 | From: Bristol | Registered: Nov 2003
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daisymay
St Elmo's Fire
# 1480
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Posted
The Father did not suffer in exactly the same way as the Son, but they each suffered horribly and, I imagine, equally.
Isn't there a painting somewhere showing Christ being crucified, with the Father behind Him (where Jesus could not see) sheltering Him and the Holy Spirit overshadowing the whole image of pain?
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London
Flickr fotos
Posts: 11224 | From: London - originally Dundee, Blairgowrie etc... | Registered: Oct 2001
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear Daisymay
Any depiction of the Father is entirely wrong ... this includes such depictions on degraded "Orthodox" (heterodox actually) "icons" of the Trinity ... condemned by a Council of the Russian Church.
Nothing possessed of by the single divine nature ALONE, (in this case, the Father and the Spirit) can suffer in the direct sense. Only the human nature of Christ (assumed by the Logos / Word) can suffer. The effects of that suffering do however impinge on the Father in so far as he is not unmoved by the suffering of either the creation or His Son in His human nature.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by daisymay:
Isn't there a painting somewhere showing Christ being crucified, with the Father behind Him (where Jesus could not see) sheltering Him and the Holy Spirit overshadowing the whole image of pain?
The very odd sculptured altarpiece of the Joys of Mary currenlty on show int the Gothic exhibition at the V&A has that.
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Ken
Lamor che move il sole e laltre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Fr. Gregory:
Any depiction of the Father is entirely wrong
Including the God the Father's self-description in the incarnate Jesus, or in the inspired scriptures?
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Ken
Lamor che move il sole e laltre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Jerry Boam
Shipmate
# 4551
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Fr. Gregory:
Nothing possessed of by the single divine nature ALONE, (in this case, the Father and the Spirit) can suffer in the direct sense. Only the human nature of Christ (assumed by the Logos / Word) can suffer. The effects of that suffering do however impinge on the Father in so far as he is not unmoved by the suffering of either the creation or His Son in His human nature.
This strikes me as a very odd formulation...
My immediate reaction is that this seems like a kind of sophistry--that the church is making palusible and coherent statements about things it cannot psossibly know and seem unlikely to be true. It also seems to hang on some weird technical definition of suffering... God is "not unmoved" by the suffering of creation or the Son, but it would be wrong to characterise the way that he is moved as suffering? In what way is God moved then?
Then I think about the nature of empathy and how much I suffer when I see my own son or daughter suffering--How distressing it is to see any suffering and how I sometimes can't bring myself to watch the news when I am tired because I know that seeing all that suffering will be more than I can take. These thoughts lead me to consider stories that I read in the Science Times and New Scientist over the last couple of years about the physical basis of empathy and the way that observing pain in others triggers electrochemical responses in the observer that are similar (though less intense) than those that would be seen if the observer were directly experiencing the pain.
Then I think about the idea that we are made "in the image of god" and what this might mean about God's emotional nature...
The idea that God is incable of suffering also seems like an arbitrary limit on God (what if God chooses to suffer?) and it seems to make God into a monster in order to keep a semblance of coherence in human doctrines about him.
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If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is not for you.
Posts: 2165 | From: Miskatonic University | Registered: May 2003
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear Ken
By "depiction" I mean direct iconic representation of the subject.
Dear Jerry Boam
I accept the force of what you are saying but only on the grounds that we are not being sufficiently precise about the variant forms of suffering in terms of a divine subjective experience ... about which we may only be tentative anyway. "Not being unmoved" is not, for God, the same as, say, physical suffering or moral affliction.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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daisymay
St Elmo's Fire
# 1480
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Posted
C'm on, Fr G,
if God can rest on the seventh day, and feel satisfied and happy about the creation, God is capable of emotion. And I don't think that's merely happy emotion. God can suffer.
One of the ways we are made in God's image is being able to experience emotions.
Or are we following that English Franciscan William bloke who reckoned Jesus had no sense of humour because He was God?
I prefer Ibn Arabi who believes the creation came out of God's longing for us. If that is so, then that longing also caused God to rescue us when we needed it so God could have us back as His lovers.
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London
Flickr fotos
Posts: 11224 | From: London - originally Dundee, Blairgowrie etc... | Registered: Oct 2001
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
As I said Daisymay ... it just depends what you mean by "suffer." I offered two examples of suffering that wouldn't apply.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by daisymay:
I prefer Ibn Arabi who believes the creation came out of God's longing for us. If that is so, then that longing also caused God to rescue us when we needed it so God could have us back as His lovers.
Some people think God created because of being lonely.
In James Weldon Johnson's poem "The Creation", God says "I'm lonely--I think I'll make me a world!" Then God proceeds to make everything by hand, right down in the dirt.
There was a little book called "In The Kingdom of the Lonely God", written by the chaplain at Notre Dame University.
And in one of Fr. Andrew Greeley's novels, Fr. Blackie imagines God as a teenage girl who wants friends to hang out with.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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fatprophet
Shipmate
# 3636
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Posted
Of course, you have hit the nail on the head. How can it be said that God physically suffers or dies? However perhaps we should consider that divine suffering as empathy, an empathy beyond anything humans can experience, that is tele- and omni-pathic.
As noted above I see the incarnation and death and ressurection of Christ as are all part of the same atonement "process". Atonement is the uniting of God and Man spiritually, but this is a process of two drawn out acts: God crossing over to us and entering into empathic experience of our psychic hells; Man being raised to God's heaven united to God through Christ and his Spirit.
Presumably its common ground that our uniting to God is not simply the product of our own righteousness, we are not "holy" before we unite with God. Where then does all sin and darkness go when we unite with God? God "bears" it and overcomes it. How does God bear it? As infinite empathy and super-conscious-awareness of the human condition which is distinct (surely?) from simple omniscient knowlege of our condition.
However, to my mind, the pain of God does not "pay" for salvation, for atonement, rather it is the inevitable consequence of God's uniting with us sinners, and of course His uniting with us is the only way we can be saved.
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FAT PROPHET
Posts: 530 | From: Wales, UK | Registered: Dec 2002
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
Ok, I've been thinking quite a bit about this recently, so I thought I'd bump this thread with another thought.
Did Christ actually serve our punishment for us? Isn't the result of our sins either an eternity of tourment (worst case) or an eternity of nothing (best case) - and with either, didn't Christ circumvent that punishment? If our punishment was just //physical// death, then aren't we still going to serve that punishment?
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
Posts: 513 | From: not so sunny Warwickshire | Registered: Feb 2003
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Neil Robbie
Shipmate
# 652
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Posted
fatprophet quote:
However, to my mind, the pain of God does not "pay" for salvation, for atonement, rather it is the inevitable consequence of God's uniting with us sinners, and of course His uniting with us is the only way we can be saved.
The latter half of your statement - spot on. Can we call it FAITH-UNION?
2 Cor 5:17-21 contains the essence of this FAITH-UNION. Christians are no longer 'individuals' in the sort of sense that they are 'in Christ' (v17), that is that they are in some form of union with Christ. It is in the participation language and the imputation language (v21) of 2 Cor 5:17-21 that we find Christ became sin and Christians become righteous. The sinner's guilt is transferred to Christ and Christ's righteousness to Christians in participatory FAITH-UNION.
I do not agree with your dismissal of the penal aspect of atonement. There is a penalty of sin, which is death. In FAITH-UNION, Christians die with Christ before they are raised with him (Rom 6:4ff).
And as for the guilt. It is not subjective remorse for moral shortcoming but our human status before the holy and righteous God. In FAITH-UNION our status as guilty is removed and replaced with a status of righteousness (2 Cor 5:21). Christians can say with confidence "we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs from under your table", Daisymay, because it places the Christian alongside the Syrophoenician Woman (Mark 7:24-30) who, as an unclean, demon contaminated, Gentile, woman, as far from the people of God as can be imagined by first century standards, enters FAITH-UNION with Christ by her words.
Neil
[ 09. January 2004, 19:44: Message edited by: Neil Robbie ]
Posts: 228 | From: Wolverhampton | Registered: Jun 2001
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Golden Key quote:
Some people think God created because of being lonely.
But that wouldn't be the trinitarian God! The trinitarian God, who is love, creates out of love, not out of need or lack.
Fatprophet quote:
How can it be said that God physically suffers or dies? However perhaps we should consider that divine suffering as empathy, an empathy beyond anything humans can experience, that is tele- and omni-pathic.
My understanding is that without confusion or separation the divine and human natures of the one Christ participate in the unity of his being in such a way that what you can say of the one nature you can say of the other. (The Lutherans, in particular, if I understand correctly, make a great deal of this communicatio idiomatum.) That's why we can speak of God crucified, and God dying for us. I don't have any difficulty in understanding the human experiences of Jesus as taken deeply and entirely into the inmost being of God - and of constituting something that, maybe, on one level God had known before, by empathy, whether tele- or omni-pathic, or maybe by sheer omnipotence - but in another sense is known by God for the first time directly and by experience in the Incarnation. To say that only the humanity of Christ 'experiences' these things seems to me to pull the unity of the being of Jesus Christ apart. It also misses the opportunity of saying something which is utterly necessary to be heard. There are times, as the Scottish theologian Ronald Gregor Smith said, when "Only a suffering God can help..."
This also touches on the Christian teaching that Christ is our representative not 'just' on the Cross, but in the Incarnation. There is a sense in which God in Christ takes upon himself not the humanity of a man, but the humanity of us all. (Racism is blasphemy because it denies this.) God in Christ assumes our humanity in order to heal it. 'What is not assumed is not healed'. This is yet another perspective on the Atonement, alongside PS, Christus Victor and Abelard.
Maybe in considering the Atonement we need to remember that distinctions have to be made between 'substitutionary' and 'representative'.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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The Bede's American Successor
Curmudgeon-in-Training
# 5042
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by psyduck:
So - am I Christus Victor, or am I penal substitutionary? Well, more both than neither.
But I'm actually personally more indebted to someone who hasn't been mentioned yet. Peter Abelard...
I've said enough for now. Any other Abelard fans out there want to take this one and run with it?
Well, I'm not exactly a fan of Abelard. I do find his idea of Christ's death being more of an offering to us interesting, but somehow missing the point. Let me explain.
As some of you may have picked up an occasional reference I have made to a recent cancer operation and my current radiation therapy. A part of this experience has been my partner's part through all this.
He has been there every step of the way for me. I could not have asked for any more from any person. This has created a stronger sense of love in me for him than I had before.
I do not think that my partner's care for me was done to make me love him more. A result may be a my love for him deepening, but his actions were done out of his love for me.
So, returning to why was Christ Crucified, Abelard puts forth the idea that the crucifixion was done by Him to draw us to Him out from love. If this is true, it would be the same if my partner had cared for me through this in order to make me love him more.
Christ's death does inspire love in me from him. I don't think Christ did it to inspire me to love him. It is confusing one of many results with the reason why the event happened.
Of course, why should humans be able to find "the" reason for the crucifixion? Should we be able to comprehend what God comprehends?
I find it interesting that you find the crucifixion explained in terms that are meaningful to the people of that era. You get Christus Victor in Dream of the Rood. You get Penal Substition as European society became a society bound by law. Peter Abelard was probably responding to what we now call the courtly love tradition.
So, what works today?
Of course, this is a personal question. Some people work with Christus Victor or Penal Substitution without a problem. It leaves others cold.
All the different analogies describe a part of the Truth; none describe the whole of the Truth.
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This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride of wealth and food in plenty, comfort and ease, and yet she never helped the poor and the wretched.
Ezekiel 16.49
Posts: 6079 | From: The banks of Possession Sound | Registered: Oct 2003
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
BAS: quote:
All the different analogies describe a part of the Truth; none describe the whole of the Truth.
This seems to be the overarching truth that most of us are signing up to!
quote:
I do not think that my partner's care for me was done to make me love him more. A result may be a my love for him deepening, but his actions were done out of his love for me.
No, I'm sure that's so. But I'm not entirely sure that this is the most illuminating analogy for the achieving of at-one-ment by the love of Christ on an Abelardian model. It seems clear to me from the way that you speak it that your partner's love was there as the supportive framework from the very beginning of these things. I can only imagine (I don't suppose you could know the extent of this without going through it) that your understanding of your partner's love must have deepened profoundly through all of this - but it is a deepening understanding of what's already there.
I think we need to understand Abelardian atonement in terms of western gloom and pessimism about the depth of human estrangement from God. Abelard is talking about an act of God which is essentially creative or at least re-creative of a loving relationship.
I also note that what you say suggests that you are repulsed by the sense of a goal-oriented demonstration of love. Again, in the context of the story you are narrating, that's entirely understandable. But with regard to atonement, and its possible analogies, I'd want to say this:
1) Is it necessary to assume that Christ's love is calculating and goal-oriented? One of the striking things about Jesus of Nazareth as a human being is the warmth and immediacy of his response to people. I'm thinking - to go no further afield than Mark - of the leper in ch. 1 who says that he can be healed if Jesus is willing [kerygmania-type tangent - I much prefer the reading that Jesus stretches out his hand in anger, sc. that anyone should be suffering like this], or of his response to the Syrophoenician woman, which goes so quickly (and for a Jew, recklessly) from cold to intensely warm. Is it necessary to assume that the human Jesus during his earthly life ever calculated a loving act, rather than just doing and living the love that was in him?
2)(And I know this sounds like a flat contradiction!) Sometimes it is necessary for love to be calculating. Sometimes it is necessary for love to be blatant. I'm thinking of the love that has to meet the need of someone who thinks himself utterly unloved and unloveable, and thinks, acts and exists accordingly. We're all big people here, and can supply our own examples. Sometimes it is necessary for love to say, in effect, "Of course you are loved, you stupid [insert expletive of choice]!!" And it is necessary for love to assert its presence almost violently, so as to provide an archimedean fixed point from which change in a life can be levered.
3) I think that unthinking and calculating love can come together in searing human demonstrations of love, where everything is simultaneously calculated and unthinking. And I think that these instances mirror the nature of God's love. (I'd say that the theological basis for that is that God's love in Christ in redemption is not different to God's love in Christ in creation; and that both involve the same risk. The risk is of pain and estrangement, sin, suffering and death, and is a terifying, agonizing risk for God even if, ultimately, he is able to master all the 'fallout' and bring all things back to himself - if in terms of love the system is 'closed'. How much more so if it is 'open' - and permanent loss is possible...) So that crucified love is the ultimate and only responsible loving ground for creation. It's only the cross that makes it possible to preach God, and that's because the cross forces us to preach God as love in terms that are at least to some degree Abelardian.
4) The cross doesn't just disclose God's love. It discloses what inevitably happens to love in a fallen world. And it shows a God who picks up the tab for loving like this. Calculating or not, God's love would have to be spectacular to those who have eyes to see, in a world like this. Pour an infinity of love into a near-infinity of lostness, and you get the crucifixion of God. And omnipotent or not, you get the irrational and philosophically inexplicable) sense that even for God it was a "damn close-run thing".
5) "What else" is disclosed is the reality of sin. An Abelardian approach pressed to its limits actually makes far more sense of western pessimism than a PS approach, which has God as the grumpy magistrate. This is omnipotence revealed in self-emptying. (It leaves open the possibility of omnipotence revealed elsewhere as judgement, and doesn't preclude the other approaches to atonement.) This is sin revealed by the spotlight of love - a very Johannine theme. I think I've posted the story of Mervyn Stockwoood's cat before. When he was a curate, +Mervyn had a cat of very regular habits. One night it didn't appear on schedule, and he went out to look for it, and as he turned a corner he came on a gang of boys - just teenage if I remember - stoning the animal. They ran off, and he saw at once that the cat was beyond help. He was just about to deliver the coup de grace, when he realized that, as he put it if I remember rightly, there was one last thing that the cat could do for these boys. He knew them all - so he rounded them up, and brought them back to see what they had done. To confront them with a truth about themselves.
I'm not comfortable with that story, but it does suggest to me that even on a 'subjective' level, that the cross reveals truth about who I am and what I'm complicit in, is important. This is a crucifying world, and I contribute to its character. But co-ordinate that with the insight that despite this, I am loved and accepted by a love that sometimes I treat like this, and I think that the cultural and psychological power of an Abelardian approach begins to be clear. It isn't pleasant or easy, but it is about human truth. And the way in which God intersects with this.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
Neil Robbie,
(apologies for the long post!)
A few further objections to subject to your reasoning, which so far, has been excellent. Let me start, though, with:
#1 Forgiveness:
Doesn't PSA remove the virtue of forgiveness from God? If forgiveness can be considered "the free discharge of one's debts", then can we consider receiving satisfaction for sin (and thus payment of debt) to be virtuous?
Indeed, is it actually merciful? Isn't being merciful letting someone off what is rightfully owed? Again, if God receives payment for what is rightfully owed is this actually merciful?
To illustrate a point, two stories and a parable:
Hugh owes Gordon £10 pounds, which Gordon rightfully is owed. Hugh can't pay Gordon, so Jeff steps in and pays Gordon on Hugh's behalf. Now, quick question. Has Gordon actually forgiven Hugh and let him off? No, of course not, Gordon has been paid in full. Is that virtuous?
Or, Hugh owes Gordon £10 pounds, and Gordon gives Hugh £10 to settle the debt. Aside from being a ridiculous exercise on the point of Gordon - one should ask, well, why didn't Gordon just let Hugh off? To demonstrate the worth of his debt, one might argue... well, let us ponder on this parable:
quote:
Matt 18:23-35
"Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
"The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
"But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me!' he demanded.
"His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.'
"But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.
"Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
"This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart."
Did the King (God), recieve satisfaction for his servant's debt? No, and indeed - it seems requiring it was considered, as the name of parable suggests, unmerciful. Indeed, the servant begged for patience, that he may repay his debt, thus the servant offered satisfaction; though the King, perhaps in anticipation that that could never be achieved, simply cancels the debt. No transfer of cash, he just cancels it.
The servant, who was perfectly justified in requiring a debt to be paid by his slave, then tries to receive satisfaction, only to be considered 'unmerciful'. He may well have been trying to receive his dues to pay back his master, so his motives need not have been blighted by greed. And yet, his actions are considered unmerciful. Legalistically, it was his right to claim back that which is owed, irrespective of the bigger debt from which he was released, and perhaps his moral duty to uphold the seriousness of debt. And yet, and yet, he was considered by Jesus to be unmerciful. Indeed, we are told that we have an obligation to forgive, as we have been forgiven.
But does PSA remove true forgiveness, and thus the virtue?
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
Posts: 513 | From: not so sunny Warwickshire | Registered: Feb 2003
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
//bump
Anyone want to have a go at the above? I'm genuinely looking for an answer.
One idea was that God had forgiveness as his plan all along, but that Justice had to be served, etc... Does this still hold with the above?
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
Posts: 513 | From: not so sunny Warwickshire | Registered: Feb 2003
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Jolly Jape
Shipmate
# 3296
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Posted
AB
I believe you have put your finger on one of the main reasons why I find PSA theory to be a totally inadequate way of looking at the atonement, namely, that when you set it against Jesus' life, actions and teaching, it just doesn't seem to rhyme. It's not so much that PSA has logical flaws in it, (though I believe it has), it's more that it's difficult to believe that Jesus would have any time whatsoever for a religious system which puts limits upon the mercy of His Father.
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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)
Posts: 3011 | From: A village of gardens | Registered: Sep 2002
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Anselm
Shipmate
# 4499
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by AB:
#1 Forgiveness:
Doesn't PSA remove the virtue of forgiveness from God? If forgiveness can be considered "the free discharge of one's debts", then can we consider receiving satisfaction for sin (and thus payment of debt) to be virtuous?
Indeed, is it actually merciful? Isn't being merciful letting someone off what is rightfully owed? Again, if God receives payment for what is rightfully owed is this actually merciful?
To illustrate ...
Hugh owes Gordon £10 pounds, which Gordon rightfully is owed. Hugh can't pay Gordon, so Jeff steps in and pays Gordon on Hugh's behalf. Now, quick question. Has Gordon actually forgiven Hugh and let him off? No, of course not, Gordon has been paid in full. Is that virtuous?
...
does PSA remove true forgiveness, and thus the virtue?
No.
Your reasoning only applies as a critique of PSA if you are an arian.
In your example; for Gordon to forgive Hugh the debt, he has to accept the cost of that debt for himself.
If a person hurts you, to forgive them you have to 'absorb' the pain into yourself - rather that seek to satisfy it by exacting 'justice' from them.
In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, do we not see the trinitarian God 'absorbing' the 'cost' of our sin?
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carpe diem domini
...seize the day to play dominoes?
Posts: 2544 | From: The Scriptorium | Registered: May 2003
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
Then the Cross becomes a charade, as God gives Himself a tenner. Ultimately, resolving the conflict this way results in the cross being purely demonstrative, as far as I can see - God could just as easily balance the books by not giving Himself the tenner - He still ends up with the same amount.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Fatprophet says it in the way that, to me, makes the most sense of the Biblical data.
Going back to the earlier idea, raised I think by Psyduck, of the scapegoat: the thing is, the Jewish religious system did use a scapegoat (that's where the concept came from!), and never, but never, is Jesus identified with the scapegoat. He is always identified with the temple sacrifice. But the scapegoat is the only sacrifice in the ancient Jewish system that is in any sense "substitutionary."
Grits: what other uses did the word we translate "it is finished" have in 1st century Greek? Until we know those it's a little thin assuming that it has all the same resonance as the one use you cite, and no others.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl - Liberal Backslider:
Then the Cross becomes a charade, as God gives Himself a tenner. Ultimately, resolving the conflict this way results in the cross being purely demonstrative, as far as I can see - God could just as easily balance the books by not giving Himself the tenner - He still ends up with the same amount.
Not a charade, but God demonstrating his (just) character in the method he uses to forgive us. That doesn't mean it is purely demonstrative, as it also has the effect of us being reconciled to God. I think the problem is that God demonstrating his justice, makes the cross less about us, and so we don't like it so much. But the weight of Biblical material does seem to make God demonstrating his justice as important as him granting us mercy or defeating death.
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anselm:
If a person hurts you, to forgive them you have to 'absorb' the pain into yourself - rather that seek to satisfy it by exacting 'justice' from them.
In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, do we not see the trinitarian God 'absorbing' the 'cost' of our sin?
Anselm,
Thanks for critiquing my critique (as it were) but I'm not sure I agree. First off we have the problem of translating sin into a 'cost' situation, especially as the cost (as it is often described to us) isn't the cost that Jesus paid, for he isn't eternally dead, not eternally banished from the Father's side.
Secondly, the Gordon/Hugh metaphor wasn't intended to be all emcompassing on the subject of forgiveness, but instead was focussing on debt.
If someone harmed a loved-one to me, say, any forgiveness on my part would not be 'absorbing' their sin by suffering their debt to me, but rather a choice to freely give up demanding retribution, when it's patently obvious that none satisfying can be given. It simply doesn't fit with a transactional metaphor.
So, my question for PSA still stands. Is forgiveness a virtue with it?
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
Posts: 513 | From: not so sunny Warwickshire | Registered: Feb 2003
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Leprechaun:
Not a charade, but God demonstrating his (just) character in the method he uses to forgive us.
Leprechaun,
See my issue with the parable of the unmerciful servant above. The King is unjust by forgiving a debt, the servant just by requiring it. Yet the King (God) is merciful and thus virtuous, and the servant (the unforgiving one) is not.
I just can't see how it fits with PSA...
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
Posts: 513 | From: not so sunny Warwickshire | Registered: Feb 2003
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Leprechaun
Ship's Poison Elf
# 5408
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Posted
AB,
Anselm has already answered this above. God demonstrates his justice (by punishing sin) but also his mercy as dealing with it himself rather than punishing the actual culprits (us).
The problem I have in processing this (and I'm being honest here, rather than just standing up for PSA for the sake of discussion!) is not that it shows lack of mercy (because I think it does show amazing mercy) but that it seems not to be just as the guilty one doesn't get punished. While I do accept PSA (because I'm pretty textually convinced about it) for me this would be the intellectual problem - not lack of mercy but lack of justice. If you are going to attack it, I think that's a much better line.
Posts: 3097 | From: England - far from home... | Registered: Jan 2004
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Jolly Jape
Shipmate
# 3296
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Posted
Leprechaun, you wrote :
quote:
I think the problem is that God demonstrating his justice, makes the cross less about us, and so we don't like it so much. But the weight of Biblical material does seem to make God demonstrating his justice as important as him granting us mercy or defeating death.
I think that I would profoundly disagree with the first sentence, and question the second.
- Far from PSA throwing the emphasis onto God, I believe that it is a very anthropocentric doctrine - our sin leads to Jesus being punished. It is about our (fallen) nature. Non-PSA teaching (eg Christus Victor) is much more centred in the nature of God.
- There could be a case made from the Old Testament that the demonstration of God's Justice is central to His dealings with humanity, but it would be hard to put it up there with His love, or the victory over death on analysis of the New Testament, and it certainly couldn't be inferred from Jesus' life or deeds. As AB so eloquently pointed out, the whole thrust of Jesus teaching was kenosis - he renounced his rights, including that to justice, and urged that we do the same. He "conquered by his own defeat, and won by losing all" as Michael Card put it. Is it not reasonable to assume, if He is the very likeness of the Father, that the Father would do the same?
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To those who have never seen the flow and ebb of God's grace in their lives, it means nothing. To those who have seen it, even fleetingly, even only once - it is life itself. (Adeodatus)
Posts: 3011 | From: A village of gardens | Registered: Sep 2002
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Anselm
Shipmate
# 4499
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Posted
Can we just clarify the playing field a bit?
There seems to me, very crudely speaking, four basic positions that people have seemed to be holding and arguing against.- PSA is the only way to biblically describe the work of Christ.
- PSA is one of the ways the Bible describes the work of Christ (though some might say the most useful).
- PSA, while not biblical, was a legitimate and useful way of describing the work of Christ to a particular culture (say medieval Europe). It is (probably) no longer useful.
- PSA is an unbiblical and heretical way of describing the work of Christ.
ISTM that 'most' people are at different parts of the spectrum of position 2.
I don't think anyone actually holds position 1 but alot of people are arguing against it.
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carpe diem domini
...seize the day to play dominoes?
Posts: 2544 | From: The Scriptorium | Registered: May 2003
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Anselm:
ISTM that 'most' people are at different parts of the spectrum of position 2.
I don't think anyone actually holds position 1 but alot of people are arguing against it.
That may be. I think, however, that a lot of the antagonism towards PSA is not just about it being an exclusive position, but about objections to its implications.
That is, it makes God the Father appear angry, and it is inexplicable why the death of His Son would satisfy His demand for justice. It also implies that Jesus' own words about how salvation is obtained are wrong or misconstrued. So it impacts many aspects of religion, and does not fit in well as one among a number of interpretations of Christ's work of salvation. In a sense it demands an exclusive place.
On the other hand, simple statements such as that Christ gave His life for us, or that His life was like a ransom paid for us, or that "by His stripes we are healed" - without their classic PSA interpretation - provide atonement imagery that is perfectly consistent with a number of ways of describing the work of Christ, including that He overcame the power of darkness. That is, anyone involved in a struggle does this kind of thing, making sacrifices for the sake of others.
If that is what is meant by positions 2 and 3 then I am all for them. But I doubt that many see it that way. If the ransom paid is actually a price paid to the Father to satisfy His justice, this obviates all other aspects of the struggle as it is described in the gospels. The implications are huge!
So I think that positions 2 and 3 are difficult to hold, and are inherently contradictory. I think that this is why so many gravitate either to positions 1 or 4.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
Warning: Heresy ahead. If someone can tell me why it's wrong, I'd be greatful.
Firstly, Adeodatus, you stated earlier that "(2) Humanity discovers the choice between good and evil and inevitably chooses evil."
With a strict reading of genesis, it's the other way round. Man chooses evil (eats the apple) then discovers the choice (eats the fruit of the tree of knowledge between good and evil). I would, however say that you are right that the choice was an inevitable consequence of free will. Free will as granted by God.
Secondly, and on topic, the belief I am leaning towards is Christus Victor with a strong helping of Abelard. The incarnation was both a symbol to man (c.f. Abelard) and God finally realising that directives and the Law are not the best way to get results from humans, and hence trying to work out what would work better- and in order to have a true understanding of Man, he needed to become one. Having done that and had the mistake confirmed, he decided to use the near-necessary death to force Death to bite off more than it could chew and hence to choke as it could not cope with God. (I don't see anything wrong with more than one motivation for an action nor one of a God who makes a virtue out of a necessity). The attonement was again God realising the ruleset he had established was wrong for dealing with humanity to its best potential and hence breaking it by giving it more than it could cope with. (As for why he couldn't have just destroyed them externally, I suspect firstly that it doesn't work that way and secondly the symbolism was necessary (c.f. Abelard) to show man it had been done).
As a corollary, any entity that is eternally unchanging, able to neither learn nor grow is not worthy of worship being essentially dead and of no higher standing than a rock. One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results. I may worship such an entity out of fear but that does not mean that such is worthy of my worship. I therefore do not see unchanging as any aspect of a God I can even respect.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Autobailer:
As a corollary, any entity that is eternally unchanging, able to neither learn nor grow is not worthy of worship being essentially dead and of no higher standing than a rock.
I'm not sure if this is a heresy or just a startling demonstration of lack of imagination. Or perhaps just another example of needing to create a god in one's own image?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mousethief:
I'm not sure if this is a heresy or just a startling demonstration of lack of imagination. Or perhaps just another example of needing to create a god in one's own image?
Me too. ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
Besides, the sending of Jesus demonstrates that, even if God does not Himself change, He certainly changes with regard to His creation - revealing Himself more completely over time as humanity is able to grasp what He wishes to show us. The Incarnation is no small thing, showing that God responds to our changing states.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
Go back and re-read what I wrote. I can not and do not worship static entities and think that the incarnation is proof that God is not static.
Quite what changed is another issue.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
I like that!
